Inside the RV: Living in an RV on Your Own Land

Hey guys! It’s time for another edition of Inside the RV. Last week I got to know the brains behind smalllifeliving.com, Tiffany Melvin. Tiffany, her husband, and two children live in a travel trailer on their own land and have high hopes of sailing off into the sunset on their boat one day.

Have you ever wondered what it was like living  in an RV on your own land? Keep reading to find out how the Melvins do it.

Introduce yourself and your RV.

My name is Tiffany and I live in a 31 foot travel trailer made by Forest Glen. Our RV consists of 1 bedroom and a bunk house with 4 bunks. We have 3 slides and even an island in out kitchen, which we love. Our family consists of me, my husband, and our 2 little boys. Having 4 people in an RV can be challenging at times but we love it.

Living In An RV On Your Own Land

There are many “whys” for people living in RVs. I have met many who said they wanted more freedom to travel, wanted to maintain less, want a more simple life, and so on. Our “why” is a little bit different than most. Our true dream is to one day live on our sailboat and travel. We wanted to know how living in a small space would be. We also thought it would be fun to travel in your house and own very little. Plus we wanted to save money for our future dream. Before we get to living in an RV on your own land, let’s talk about how this all got started.

How did you end up living in an RV?

We had already talked about living in an RV and my husband thought I was only half serious.  WRONGO….  It all started by talking him into having a small yard sale, which he despises, to sell off some of our belongings in an effort to have less stuff.

Well as the 2 weeks went by that I was making a pile for the yard sale, my husband realizes how big it was getting. During this “getting ready for the yard sale” phase, I was showing my husband pictures of RVs I had found online. We kept talking about it through out those 2 weeks. I don’t think my husband realized I was LITERALLY trying to sell EVERYTHING and get a 24ft RV FOR REAL until a few days before the yard sale.

We loved our old house but our dream was much bigger and we were excited for what was to come. Here are some pictures from our yard sale items.

But wait, there’s more!

We literally sold everything and did not have a storage building that we rent or anything like that. We only took what could fit in our RV. The exception is 3 small boxes with memories we stored in my mother’s attic. Interested in seeing how small our first RV was…..

Believe it or not we lived in this RV for a year with our then 1 year old son in the RV park in our hometown. We then got pregnant with our second son and decided we needed a bigger RV. So we upgraded to this….

We still lived in the RV park for another 10 months before deciding to buy our own land. It took us a while of looking before we found the right place. We knew we wanted water on the property and ended up with a creek.

So RV park vs. living in an RV on your own land? Which is better?

Living in an RV on your own land is better than living in an RV park for us. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Privacy

I loved our RV park but it’s nice to have privacy. I like to leave our windows open when it’s nice weather and not have to worry about people seeing in my RV. And we like spending time outdoors and with 7 acres we have plenty of room to play and don’t have to worry about anybody. Our RV park had mostly older couples and no children and I was always concerned that my children may bother the others at the park.

2. Fires

We did have a community fire pit on the other side of the RV park but we couldn’t have a fire at our RV site. I am really happy at our land that we can have a little fire where ever we want.

3. Gardening

You may have noticed in the picture of our house that we had an awesome yard with lots of flowers. I am so glad that we now can plant flowers and a vegetable garden again. I really missed that while at the RV park. We are also thinking about getting chickens and maybe doing a little mini homestead at our land.

When we first moved to the land we didn’t have water or electricity yet so we got to live off-grid for a while. Which was very exciting because we have wanted to do that for a while now and it actually gets us ready for sailboat life where we will be off grid. We used a generator for electricity and brought water in a large trash can and syphoned it into the RV. We can take our RV to the RV park to pump out until the septic tank is put it, but we don’t have to do this often because we aren’t always here during the day time. Also the septic tank will be in very soon.

What are your future plans?

It will be several years before we are able to live on our sailboat so during this time we have decided to build a tiny house on our property. Well, not truly “tiny” because the tiny house movement is more like 200 sq. feet and under. Our “tiny” house will be about 720 sq. feet. We haven’t started building yet but plan to in the next few months. We are hoping to have it done by the end of the year.

I’m not sure where this journey will take us and we are open to changing plans but we are having so much fun. Living a life of full-time travel is something I have always wanted to do and with a little hard work and dedication I know we can pull it off just like so many other families. If you want to full-time travel don’t give up! Even if you are like us and living in an RV on your own land, if you just keep working towards your goal then one day you will have it!

Can you believe their ultimate goal is to live on a sailboat?! Could you live on a sailboat? What is your wildest and most exciting dream?

Check out Tiffany’s site at smalllifeliving.com and be sure to like their Facebook page or Pinterest!